Fassbinder: Romantic Anarchist

Prolific and foredoomed, R.W. Fassbinder provided West German cinema with its belated new wave. The first part of a comprehensive retrospective focuses mainly on Fassbinder’s electrifying early period (late Sixties to mid Seventies) and, in addition to several extremely rare TV films, includes a one-week run of The Merchant of Four Seasons, the movie that more than any other projected Fassbinder’s capacity for economical filmmaking and maximalized pathos.